 Unfortunately, most people know of someone who has been a victim of domestic violence. Some of these victims are afraid to reach out and ask for help, while others may not know who to turn to. UPIKE School of Social Work and Turning Point Domestic Violence Services held a candlelight vigil to bring awareness to the community in an effort to end domestic violence, remember victims and honor survivors. It's extremely important that we have community partners like UPIKE and other agencies in Pike County that help us get the word out about domestic violence and that there is help. And our candlelight vigil is to honor victims that lost their lives last year in domestic violence situations. Turning Point Domestic Violence Services serves the big sandy region, Pike County being one of those counties. And we serve over 200 women a year residentially and over 85 children. We don't charge for any of our services, everything's free. And women can come to our shelter to find a safe place if they're escaping domestic violence. And we have a very comprehensive program at Turning Point. We do everything from children's programming to helping women find safe housing for them and their children. Love for people to come and tour and visit. We're located in Floyd County. We have a 20 bed program and even if we stay full most of the time we also help women find other sources of places to stay if we are full and don't have any beds available. I tell my students this all the time, if there's ever a proficient that's a superhero it's social workers. A lot of folks when they tend to think about social work they automatically think about child protective services. And although that is a very important part of what we do that is not all of what we do. Lots of folks aren't aware that social workers provide the majority of mental health in our country. They don't realize that the case managers at the hospital when they're being released or when they have special needs those folks are usually social workers. They don't always understand that when they're in the court system and someone is being an advocate for them that's a social worker. I worked with a young woman who was in a violent relationship and she hadn't quite yet realized that it was an unhealthy violent relationship. Because there were a lot of people telling her that she needed to stay and to just hang in there a little bit longer. She also had a child. She didn't work outside the home. There were a lot of barriers for her in place. And it took some time working with her and empowering her and pointing out her strengths and her natural support systems within our community. Rural areas are really good at having those natural helping networks. And so through working with her and making referrals to places like our Domestic Violence Shelter and other resources for her so she could be independent. She was able to get that strength that she needed and to gain the insight to realize this isn't good for me or my child and to leave. It took a while and it is a process. Not everyone's ready right away when they realize it. But to see the transformation in her life was phenomenal. I saw her go from a fraction of a woman to being a wonderful, brilliant, vibrant young lady who had taken control of her life and was going back to school and had a job and had an apartment and it was just it was a beautiful thing. And that's why we're here this evening to raise awareness of those victims and of the people who are currently in those situations who need our help, who need our voice because they don't quite have one. And we don't want people, men, women or children to be abused. And it's so important for them to just ask for help and to reach out to our crisis line if they just want to talk about what's going on in their lives. Not everybody's ready to come to shelter, but we have support groups and other awareness events that we would love to invite our public to. We just really encourage that openness and we want to promote awareness to women that maybe have felt like there wasn't any hope that there is hope in our region.